World News for Students of English

05-04-2021 15:00

In March, a group of hackers said that they had breached 150,000 security cameras inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons, and schools.

It resurfaced an important question among experts, academics, and consumers why there were so many people who were still so terrible at password security.

A popular password comprised in data breaches is ‘123456’, and it’s closely followed by ’password’ or by a hybrid of the two ’password1’ or ’ABC123’. The reason people choose bad passwords or share them with colleagues and friends is because the more terrible they are, the easier they tend to be to remember. However, that also makes them super simple for attackers to try against your email address or username on a website or an app. This is one of the reasons why many companies insist on their employees changing their passwords regularly.

When you can, you should switch on two-factor authentication where you log in and get a text sent to your phone to confirm your identity. Also, if your password contains words or something that you can speak out loud easily, it’s probably too insecure.

Difficult words: comprise (to consist of), data breach (an incident when information is stolen or taken from a system without the knowledge of the system’s owner), authentication (verifying the identity of a person or device).

You can watch the video news lower on this page.